Secret Watching: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

Instantly quotable and internationally recognisable Gordon Ramsay carved out a niche for himself as the chef with the bollocks to tell it like it is. Held up as some kind of culinary deity across the pond, in the UK we love to hate Gordon Ramsay, with his wooden presenting style, the over the top swearing and sarky one-liners, we’re both proud and horrified by the success of Kitchen Nightmares and its various spin-offs.

Kitchen Nightmares is one of my long-standing secret watches, secret because some people really are repulsed by Gordon’s aggressive kitchen-side manner and we know it is edited to create as much drama as possible. Many of the previous participants have come out in the press to say that the production team on the show set them up by planting things in their fridges, rearranging stock and planting difficult customers to generally create more chaos and from a production point of view, a better show.

Despite knowing this, I am absolutely here for the drama, I love meeting the restaurants and their owners, I love the assassination of the food, Gordon’s accidental catchphrases and the art of eating out being done so badly. I love it when Gordon has to dish out some home truths, when someone throws in the (tea)towel and when some of these chefs can’t even put together an omelette.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares first aired way back in 2004 and the first five seasons focussed on restaurants in and around the UK. The UK edition of the show feels a lot more holistic than its later U.S counterpart. Gordon looks at each restaurant individually, rolls his sleeves up, spends more time mentoring hungry young chefs who show potential. When he does get frustrated and sweary it feels like it is genuinely because he is invested and passionate about the potential of the restaurants and cannot bear to see the integrity of the food or the profession being tarnished by some of the inexperienced owners and chefs.

In 2007 the show launched in the U.S., where it ran from 2007- 2014, and in came the fail safe formula. Gordon arrives and is usually greeted by an enthusiastic member of front of house staff. He looks at the menu, often several pages too long and then orders some of the more ambitious dishes. Think sushi pizza or ‘tsunami fillet mignon’ served in a roof tile! They’re usually disgusting and Gordon gives his immediate feedback to the waiting staff who in turn feed it back to the chef, priming them to be as defensive as possible when they eventually meet Gordon at the end of the meal.

In the kitchen, Gordon snoops around in the fridge usually pulling out tubs of out of date food and asking ‘how long that has been in there’, ‘when was this made’ and mostly just exclaiming ‘oh come on’, when the chefs try and justify having radioactive chicken at the back of a fridge. Sometimes if a restaurant is particularly terrifying, he’ll ‘SHUT IT DOWN!’ This is always good value, as the sheepish owner then has to go out and announce to the guests that they’re not allowed to continue serving, usually while holding a bucket of rancid prawns or slimy steaks.

Gordon then works to set the restaurant right, he’ll revamp the menu, paring it down to simple, classic dishes and then will overhaul the interior, although this always looks like a Changing Rooms scenario where they have just plastered over the old wallpaper and chucked in some uncomfortable IKEA chairs and tables. The staff are always overjoyed at the transformation and they go into the launch night, inviting locals to test out the new menu. If it’s a juicy episode the launch will start well but by the end of the night old problems will have reared their ugly head. Gordon will step in to help finish service, wrangle an emotional chef back in from a dark alleyway and occasionally do a piece to camera with his signature beak hand gesture wondering if ‘this time he has bitten off more than he can chew.’ It all comes good in the end (most of the time) and Gordon walks into the night satisfied that he has changed a restauranteurs life for the better.

True to the Midnight Culture philosophy, my favourite time to watch the show is as a late-night chaser. After an evening of quality entertainment like an Oscar-winning film or a groundbreaking documentary, stick on a couple of episodes of Gordon Ramsay to cleanse your palate. For this post I thought I would share my top five favourite episodes of all time.

Amy’s Baking Company

It only feels right to start with probably the most famous episode of Kitchen Nightmares. You don’t have to be a superfan of the show to have seen clips of Amy with her wild eyes and belief that she is making the best pizzas outside of Italy. Before Gordon has even arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona footage is captured of an altercation between owner Samy and some customers who have complained about the hour wait on their food. Samy goes from amicable to aggressive at the flick of a switch which leads to several blow ups throughout the episode. To this day Amy and Samy are adamant that they were set up by the show and that the difficult customers were planted to create those reactions. This is the only episode where Gordon holds his hands up and says that the restaurant is beyond saving and it would be best for him to walk away.

Episode Highlights:

• The Gordon and Samy ‘don’t fuck with me’ argument.
• Amy claiming that diners sending back undercooked food are doing it because they want to ‘fuck with her life,’ when her livelihood is literally to cook food for diners.
• Gordon sitting down calmly, completely resigned to the fact they are delusional and that he is walking away.

El Greco

This episode has a cult following in my family, to this day we still routinely refer to its star, Chef Mike as the cornerstone of Kitchen Nightmares. Chef Mike is the kitchens’ microwave and probably the hardest working microwave in the hospitality sector outside of Wetherspoons. The greek restaurant is in Austin, Texas and is run by a mother and son, Athina and Jake. However Jake has lost his passion, spending only a couple of hours in the restaurant at a time and relying on Chef Mike to do all the heavy lifting. Athina and her sister Kiki bring the melodrama, screaming at Jake in Greek and having an all out verbal brawl in the pot wash that ends with everyone in tears.

Episode Highlights:

• The reveal of Chef Mike as the anti-hero of the episode: doing the most but single-handedly dragging everyone down.
• Gordon referring to the restaurant as a greek tragedy and a nuclear power station.
• Gordon’s mid-service assessments to camera where he comes outside to give his hot take on what is happening, before urgently pulling open the door and heading back into the fire.

You can watch the full episode here.

Piccolo Teatro

This is the only episode in the series set in Paris and it comes with all the fabulous eccentricity you would want in a French special. Gordon is pumped to return to Paris where he started out as young chef many moons ago. Piccolo Teatro is an uninspiring vegetarian restaurant with a pistachio lasagne, a carrot gratin and a hummus salad all featured on the menu. The real issue here is the staff, owner, Rachel, relies on her flaky friends to help her run the restaurant and the chef, Daniel, struggles when he is not allowed to improvise in the kitchen like he normally does. Gordon does loads of reminiscing on his time in Paris and gets to showcase his French speaking skills but this episode is true chaos from start to finish.

Episode Highlights

• Daniel refusing to leave the premises, wandering around talking to diners and then trying to clear plates until Gordon has to physically remove him from the premises.
• Rachel’s flaky friend Stephanie shuffling out of the restaurant and leaving Rachel in the shit because she literally can’t be bothered to work.
• Gordon taking Rachel and her dad (who loves a ten gallon hat) out to a show in the Moulin Rouge to convince her that her vegetarian food needs to be packed full of butter, cream and cheese to increase the sex appeal! Followed by a very noughties double entendre about ‘naughty vegetarian tarts’.

You can watch the full episode here.

Bonapartes

The very first episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, this is where it all began and Gordon is in Silsden, Yorkshire visiting wine bar and restaurant Bonapartes. Sue, the owner, is at her wits end and the kitchen is run by ‘executive chef’ Tim. The restaurant serves fine dining cuisine, something that the locals have no interest in. Tim has no experience in the kitchen, practical understanding of food or basic common sense and when asked to cook Gordon a signature dish he serves rancid scallops that he had no idea had gone off. Gordon is seen vomiting and is completely scarred by the experience.

Episode highlights:

• Tim cooking his family a three course meal; burning the croutons for his French onion soup and setting off the smoke alarm, serving a chicken Kiev that is burnt on the outside and pink on the inside and a semi-successful lemon meringue pie.
• The multiple technical and palate tests that Gordon puts ‘chefs’ Tim and Lee through and the reveal that Tim can’t tell if something has gone off or tastes strange until someone else tells him.
• Gordon taking Tim out for a day at the market and teaching him how to shop for fresh produce, barter and start to build relationships with the suppliers by basically being his mouthpiece.

You can watch the full episode here.

The Runaway Girl

This is one of my favourite UK episodes. Gordon arrives in Sheffield proclaiming that from the outside The Runaway Girl looks like a seedy hair salon and inside, the black leather interior, dark walls and glossy bar makes it look like a shit nightclub. The chef, Richie is qualified and passionate but has no budget for fresh ingredients so is cooking frozen, low quality food, pre-cooked and stored in giant industrial containers. Justin the owner was working in recruitment before he opened the restaurant and is obsessed with live music and featuring local bands, he is also brilliant at bullshitting, which makes me think he would be happier as some sort of promoter rather than a restaurant owner. Gordon’s arrival further fuels the tension between Richie and Justin as many of the problems Gordon identifies Richie has already tried to tell Justin.

Episode highlights:

• Richie reading Justin to absolute filth at every opportunity and Gordon talking to Richie like he is a prize-winning fighter.
• Diners spraying their tapas at each other, trying to project over the live music and a PA system that keeps feeding back.
• Justin’s waiting skills role play, which demonstrates Justin’s complete lack of charm or charisma and instead highlights his awkwardness and bizarre skin crawling energy.

You can watch the full episode here.

You can find more episodes of Kitchen Nightmares on All4 and there are countless compilation videos of the worst meals, worst kitchens etc. on YouTube.